By MARY COCHRANE

“We have dedicated our careers to better understanding schizophrenia and we are very close to reaching a great milestone in how to treat this disease.”

Michal Stachowiak, professor

Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences

A gift of $600,000 from the Patrick P. Lee Foundation is funding
a UB scientist’s promising research on the cause of
schizophrenia. It is the foundation’s largest-ever grant to
UB.

The devastating disease affects some 2 million Americans.

Schizophrenia most often strikes men and women from adolescence
through adulthood, but its origin may lie in genetic missteps years
earlier, when those it afflicts are still in the womb.

This is one implication of new findings from the laboratory of
Michal Stachowiak, professor in the Department of Pathology and
Anatomical Sciences, School of Medicine and Biomedical
Sciences.

The Lee Foundation grant will fund four-year fellowships for
three PhD or MD-PhD trainees to study and conduct research
investigating the new approach to schizophrenia under the direction
of Stachowiak and his team.

“Dr. Stachowiak and his team are focusing on revealing the
causes and neurodevelopmental mechanisms of schizophrenia; they are
hoping to discover new possibilities for developing schizophrenia
treatments, even a way to affect the development of this
disease,” says Patrick P. Lee, chairman of The Patrick P. Lee
Foundation.

In addition to producing the young researchers who will join the
race to understand schizophrenia, the fellowships help support
Stachowiak’s research efforts.

Stachowiak says findings of novel gene-regulatory mechanisms
suggest it might someday be possible to arrest the progression of
the disease before it fully develops.

“We believe that the transgenic mouse developed in our
laboratory offers a unique model that explains schizophrenia from
genes to brain structure and finally to development,” he
says.

“We have dedicated our careers to better understanding
schizophrenia and we are very close to reaching a great milestone
in how to treat this disease. Never before have we been this
excited about funding.”

The Patrick P. Lee Foundation, based in Amherst, N.Y., was
formed by Patrick P. Lee in 2005. Lee built International Motion
Control, a worldwide conglomerate with manufacturing facilities. It
was acquired by ITT in 2007.

Please leave blank

Comments

The UB Reporter welcomes comments from its readers. Please
submit your comments in the box below.